The Kremlin believes that military aid from the West to Kiev will not allow “quick ending” of the armed conflict
On Wednesday, when the situation at the Azovstal steel plant was untenable and it seemed that this focal point of resistance, the last stronghold in Mariupol in Ukrainian hands, would fall overnight, Russia, amid international outrage and concern for the civilians trapped there announced a ceasefire late in the afternoon. It should have started Thursday and lasted until Saturday. According to the Russian Defense Ministry, humanitarian corridors would be opened from 8 a.m. to 6 p.m. during each of the three days to evacuate civilians from the steel plant.
However, fighters from the nationalist Azov battalion, which is classified in Russia as a “neo-Nazi group”, on Thursday denounced Russian troops preventing civilians from leaving the factory. “The Russians have violated their promise of a ceasefire and will not allow the evacuation,” Azov deputy commander Sviatoslav Palamar said in a video.
Palamar called on the international community to “evacuate civilians and we personally appeal to the Commander-in-Chief – President Volodímir Zelensky – to take care of the wounded soldiers who are dying in terrible agony due to insufficient treatment of their wounds”. “Give the possibility to remove the bodies of the soldiers so that the Ukrainians can say goodbye to their heroes,” he added.
Hours earlier, the adviser to the Ukrainian presidency, Oleksiy Arestovich, had stated that Russian forces managed to penetrate the Azovstal perimeter on May 4, but, he emphasized, “our defenders expelled them”. Such information was denied by Palamar, who said that “no one has been able to turn them off, they are in the factory. It is already the third day since the enemy broke into the factory and the violent and bloody fighting continues.
However, Kremlin spokesman Dmitri Peskov insisted that Azovstal’s humanitarian corridors “work” and claimed that Russian forces “respect the ceasefire and refrain from attacking”. “You were witnesses, the president -Vladímir Putin- publicly ordered to stop the attack -on Azovstal- and no new orders were given in this regard,” Peskov emphasized. On April 21, the Russian president and his defense minister, Sergei Shoigu, appeared together in a television video to announce the fall of Mariupol. Shoigu reported that the city had been ‘liberated’, except for Azovstal. He added that the steel mill would also be evacuated soon, to which Putin responded by ordering “cancel the attack” as “inappropriate”.
The UN and the Red Cross sent another humanitarian convoy on Thursday to evacuate Azovstal. This was stated by United Nations Deputy Secretary-General and Emergency Relief Coordinator Martin Griffiths. In his words: “Now the convoy is going to Azovstal. We hope to pick up the rest of the civilians in that grim hell and bring them to safety.” On Wednesday, Mariupol’s mayor, Vadim Boichenko, said there are “hundreds of civilians, including more than 30 children,” in the labyrinthine cellars of the steel mill.
Putin spoke to Israeli Prime Minister Naftali Bennett by phone on Thursday, guaranteeing that the civilians trapped in the steel plant “will be given a safe exit.” But the Kremlin chief told Bennett that Kiev should “order those in hiding in Azovstal to lay down their weapons,” a demand Moscow has been repeating for weeks. Shoigu warned on Wednesday that “they are surrounded” and will not be able to escape.
Peskov compared the Azovstal defenders to terrorists on Thursday. “The demands of the nationalists who take refuge in the factory’s underground buildings, (…) are very similar to the demands made previously by terrorists, in Syria and elsewhere,” he said, referring to the swapping of citizens for food and medicine. The general staff of the Ukrainian army denounced in a statement that “the Russian occupiers are determined to block and try to destroy Ukrainian units in the Azovstal area”.
The Commander-in-Chief of the Ukrainian forces, General Valeri Zaluzhni, said his forces “launched a counter-offensive towards Kharkov and Izium”, the latter a city occupied by Russian troops and of major strategic importance for the offensive in Donbas towards from Sloviank and Kramatorsk. Zaluzhni also drew attention to Russia’s resumption of cruise missile use.
“The main aim of these actions is to destroy the logistical routes for the delivery of military technical assistance to Ukraine” by the West, the general said. Peskov also spoke on the matter, noting that “the US, UK and NATO as a whole are constantly sharing information with the Ukrainian armed forces in conjunction with arms deliveries.” “These actions ensure that the operation cannot end soon,” he explained, and he also insisted that “the objectives of the special military operation in Ukraine will be achieved in any case,” as, he stressed, the western countries “have no capacity to prevent it.”
Ukrainian women are used as “weapons of war”. It is the phrase used this Thursday by Home Affairs Commissioner Ylva Johansson during an intervention in the European Parliament denouncing the rape of thousands of women in Ukraine by Russian soldiers. Johansson claimed the right to abortion for the victims of this sexual violence and demanded that they be treated “immediately and unconditionally”. “Russia is not only waging war against Ukraine, Russia is also waging war against women. We have credible information that soldiers are raping women and girls between the ages of 10 and 70,” he sternly described. The European Parliament plenary on Thursday approved a resolution against sexual violence and the exploitation of women and minors in Ukraine. In the text, they demand that refugee reception centers be adapted to their specific needs and that they be covered to collect their complaints in accessible languages and formats.
Source: La Verdad
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